Khoj Studios presents Two Artist-Show September 28, 2011

New Delhi: Khoj Studios presents Intimate Architectures: Materials at Play - a show of art works exploring the relationship between material and space by Gabi Schillig (Germany) and Masooma Syed (Pakistan/India) that have been created during a month long residency at Khoj Studios. The work will be displayed at Khoj Studios, S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi from September 28 till October 5, 2011.

Since the beginning of her art practice, Gabi Schillig has been working with cloth as her material, especially felt (a thick woollen cloth), to create three dimensional garment-like installations that have the ability to interact with the human body and also straddle architecture, textile design, performance and conceptual art.

“This is my first time in India and at Khoj. Since I have been trained as an architect, my work is about creating an interaction between public space, people and the material that I work in,” she says.

For her project at Khoj, Gabi has chosen to work with pieces of chanderi cloth, in various colours and sizes. Using geometrical patterns, reminiscent of her architectural training, Gabi is folding and pleating the cloth pieces in a multi-layered manner, and then stitching it into a 4 metre by 4 metre installation piece with the help of a local tailor. The work will be suspended in the courtyard of Khoj Studios in a way that will allow people to negotiate their way through the work, interact with it, hide inside it, and even use it as a garment if one so wishes. “The work is very minimalistic with only one colour on the outside but various hues on the inside of the installation. I used chanderi because I wanted to work with a material that is Indian and also because of its transparency. One can see the outside world from inside the installation and view what is happening inside it from the outside.”

While Gabi is working with textiles because “they can adapt and change”, she connects her work to her architectural responses as well. “I feel that buildings all over are totally out of scale. The message is to create something which people can interact both in terms of scale and material.”

Masooma Syed, on the other hand, is working with the concept of material that comes to her from public spaces. During her residency at Khoj, she has collected hordes of found material both from bustling market places and sometimes, even from outside temples – amulets, figurines of gods and goddesses, discarded beer bottle caps, velvet cloth, medicine tablets to name a few – which will all come together to showcase her current fascination with the concept of ‘vanity’. “I have been working with jewellery, although of a different kind - using hair, fingernails, tamarind seeds and scrap metal, for some time now.But from a mere decorative art, ornament of utility, a decoration used to embellish parts of a building, body or object; it is a strong vehicle for communication. It has embedded history of a society and its politics we live in, along with its functional wear-ability. It also makes structural references to sculpture and architecture. From this evolved the idea of ‘adornment’ that then took me to the idea of ‘vanity’. I visited several market spaces where everything and anything is available – all for the sake of satisfying one’s vanity,” she says.
For the project at Khoj, apart from making pieces of jewellery in found material, she is also converting a steel trunk into a sort of vanity box covered with velvet cloth and fancy laces.
About the Artists:
Gabi Schillig
(born 1977, Germany), she studied Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences Coburg and completed her postgraduate studies in Conceptual Design with distinction at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. She worked for several architectural studios in Berlin, Sydney, Frankfurt and Coburg before establishing her own research and artistic practice in Berlin. Since 2007 she is teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts at the Institute for Transmedia Design.
Gabi Schillig lives and works in Berlin.
Masooma Syed

Born and brought up in Lahore, Pakistan, Masooma Syed studied painting and later studied MA in Visual Arts from National College of Arts, Lahore. Since then she has been involved in studio practice, and has exhibited in Pakistan and abroad, participating in several artists residencies and workshops.
Masooma has also taught art in various art institutes namely The National College of Arts, Lahore; Beaconhouse National University, Lahore; Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi; as well as School of Art and Design, Kathmandu University, Nepal and Manchester Metropolitan University, England.

Some landmark exhibitions for Masooma were her first solo show at Rohtas Gallery Islamabad, and Art Space ‘University New South Wales while she was on the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Fellowship in Sydney, 1997-1998.

She lives and works between Lahore and New Delhi.
--